Fair Food, Food Carts, and the Food Concession Business

Category: Non-Fiction
Publication Date: 2011
ISBN 978-0-9765703-5-6
Pages: 272
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Binding: Soft cover/perfect bound
Illustrations and Images: 93
Back matter: Appendix, bibliography, index
Rights: Barbara J Fitzgerald
Distributed by: Carnival Press
Publisher: Carnival Press
List: $39.95

Premise:

“Food Booth, The Entrepreneur's Complete Guide to the Food Concession Business” is for anyone who needs a simple, budget-wise way to create a full time job or add a second income. This book invites readers to help themselves create a better life. It directly addresses the unique issues facing small mobile food concession start-ups and helps the novice business person succeed. Sprinkled throughout the book are anecdotes and examples from the author's many years of experience in the business, along with tips for competing for customers on the midway. The book details how to start and maintain a profitable, low-overhead concession business including:

• What is required to start your business.
• How to realistically customize your business to produce your desired level of income.
• How to determine the best booth and menu for you.
• Where to acquire the booth and equipment you need.
• How to identify reliable and proven best-selling menus.
• How to easily become licensed with the health department.
• How to successfully locate events and approach prespective venue coordinators for event contracts.
• How to identify stationary food stand site criteria
• How to secure the best location for your food stand.
• How to determine costs and budget for adequate financial resources.
• How to plan for and initiate booth set-up.
• How to stay competitive on the midway.
• How to set-up simple bookkeeping
• Managing and growing your business.
• plus much, much more.

Whether you want to sell food at fairs, festivals, and special events or from a stationary food stand, Food Booth, The Entrepreneur’s Complete Guide to the Food Concession Business, Expanded 2nd Edition, is a step-by-step "how-to" guide to designing, managing, and operating a successful food concession business. Based directly on the author’s nearly three decades of experience, Food Booth is a rare insight into this refreshingly unconventional, yet surprisingly lucrative field of food service. It provides concrete, no-nonsense information about how to start your food concession business from the ground up, how to find and establish a stationary location or develop a schedule of lucrative events, how to manage your business to reach your sales potential quickly, and compound your sales year after year.

• Considering starting a food concession.
• Unemployed or under-employed and need a dependable source of income.
• Have already worked in a concession and are now ready to start your own concession business.
• Ready to take your business knowledge and experience and apply them to a new business.
• Want to make an income while working from home and being your own boss.
• A non-profit seeking fund raising opportunities.
• Part-time employed and wish to start a business to fill the income void.
• A retiree who wants a fun way to travel and make money.
• A student who needs a job that won't interfere with your class schedule.
• A family who believes in working together for the things you enjoy.
• Hard to employ due to being under-educated, over-aged, or an ex-convict.

The book is designed to guide you with the information you need to start and run a successful concession business. It is concise, thorough, and offers in-depth information that even experienced concessionaires will find useful. The language is clear, readable and straight to the point. It explains:

• How to calculate your potential earnings before you spend any money on your new business.
• 8 Important things you should learn about an event before you sign up.
• How to avoid buying unnecessary licenses.
• The key reasons some menus make money and some don’t.
• 7 important things successful vendors know are critical for their success.
• How to profit from the mistakes other new vendors make.
• How you can easily sell food at an event without buying a booth or equipment.
• 9 Key things you can do right now to get yourself ready for this business.
• 10 reasons why this is the right business at the right time.

The book also includes example event applications, health permit license applications, and business forms. You will learn everything you need to get your business started and reach your profit potential quickly.The information in the book is divided into four parts. The first section, Planning your Business, addresses the process of due diligence. The second, Planning your Booth and Equipment, is about the nuts and bolts of the business assets. The third, Events and Venues, addresses the particulars of concession venues. And the fourth, It’s Show time, talks about the activities of management, operations, and making money. Where appropriate I have included dozens of photographs and various example event and health permit applications, accounting forms, worksheets for illustration, and a planning guide to keep you on track. And finally, there’s an appendix of resources at the back of the book to help you locate sources of outside information.